Why Diet Don't Work?

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Why Diet Don't Work?

Updated April 22, 2011
3 minute read

When you eat lightly during the day and consume the bulk of your calories at night, the downside, as the day progresses, you get so hungry that it becomes harder to make nutritious choices and harder to fit in the food you really need.  There are ways to change your eating pattern to make your diet healthier says a dietitian.

Snack time 

When is the best time to snack?  If it has been more than three hours since your last meal, it is definitely time for a snack.  According to a medical doctor when you go longer than four hours without eating, your blood sugar dips and your brain sends out urgent hunger signals.  Without a snack, you are likely to overeat at your next meal. Another key time snack is about half hour before your exercise.  A light carbohydrate snack will give your extra energy for your workout.

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             Snacks

When to take vitamins

The specific hour is not important says a medical doctor.  But it is best to take them at the same time of the day, that way, they will become part of your routine.  When you consumed with a snack or a meal, many supplements are better absorbed.  If you take calcium pills, space them out during the day because one large dose is not absorbed.  You could have one dose with lunch and another before you go to bed with milk or a snack.  If you are taking Iron on the advice of your doctor, do not take it along with a calcium supplement, because calcium interferes with Iron absorption added a medical doctor.

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             Calcium supplement

Why diets don't work

After many years of research and study, researchers found out three reasons:

  • Physical aspects.  The body can handle only one extended fast in a lifetime.  Sudden or prolonged deprivation of food lowers it's metabolism rate, which is the amount of calories it requires to burn each day in order to function.  Crash diets are self-defeating.  They trigger your genetic alarm system, decreasing the amount of calories you need to function and causing out bodies to store extra fat as a hedge against future deprivation.
  • It is all in the mind.  Have you noticed that as soon as you go on a diet, you start obsessing about food more than ever?  People move toward their most dominant thought, it is about not having something.  When you do on a diet; you will start dying for whatever it is you crave, because you cannot have it.  Even while managing to resist putting the forbidden food into your mouth, you are still a prisoner of food in your mind.  You might not be burning the calories, but your mind is burning with thoughts about what  you are not eating. No wonder diets make people so depressed.
  • Food addiction According to nutritionist, addiction to food is much more difficult to live with than addiction to alcohol or other substances from which people can totally abstain.  Food addicts often believe they must control excessive eating every time they put food in their mouths, but sooner or later that negativity will do them in and they will attack food with vengeance.  Food addiction is a disease of the human spirit which cannot be cured by physical solution alone like dieting of the human spirit which cannot be cured by a physical solution alone like dieting and exercise. Treatment must be holistic addressing the emotional physical and spiritual cases says a psychologist. 

Diet Soda Study

Watch that diet soda drink!  The shocking news is, people who drink diet sodas have a very high chance of becoming overweight.  Researchers with the long-term San Antonio Heart Study at the University of Texas health Science Center have come up with a puzzling paradox for which they have no good explanation.  Then over a 26-year study period with 622 normal-weight participants aged 25 to 64, researchers determined that those who drank diet sodas were more likely to be overweight.  The risk of being overweight increased 65 percent more with each diet drink per day.

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             Soda drink

So what is it then that causes weight gain if it's not the diet drinks?  One theory is that someone who drinks diet soda may think it is Ok to consume more calories, that is,  it's fine to have that giant burger and super sized fries as long as they wash them down with diet soda.

Source:

           Anonymous, "Watch That Diet Soda Drink!." Women's journal 16 July 05

           Anonymous, "Ways to Change Your Eating Pattern to Make Your Diet Healthy."  Women's home companion